Completing that work, he went on to be an assistant to Professor W. K. Hancock and wrote a detailed study on the structure of the British government and its relationships to the armed forces from 1850 through the Second World War.
After demobilisation, Gibbs returned to his fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, where he taught modern history and philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE).
At this time, he began working on the first volume of the official history of Second World War in the Grand Strategy series [1], to be entitled Rearmament Policy.
Gibbs's election to the Chichele Chair at the age of 42 marked a turning point in the study of military and naval history at Oxford.
Norman Gibb's Inaugural Lecture as Chichele Professor of the History of War was devoted to The Origins of the Committee of Imperial Defence.
In his work with the uniformed services, he established with a series of courses for officers of the Royal Air Force to qualify them for further studies at the staff college level.
With Piers Mackesy, he taught the undergraduate special subject in military history and took on the supervision of a wide range of graduate students.